There's a point in "Peddi" where one character is narrating a glorious story. It has to do with the figure carved out of stone in front of them. It's not an ordinary statue. "Peddi" is not an ordinary movie either. Well, it isn't, and it is. I'll get to that in a while. When the man is narrating this story, there is a level of artifice to his narration. And when we start noticing the way the both men are lit in this scene, it becomes soon evident that this was shot in front of a green screen — this exterior location looks fake, which further calls attention to the... theatricality of it.
"Peddi", most of the time, feels like a stage drama shot with a movie camera. I would say about 80% of the movie behaves this way. Look, when a filmmaker like, say, Rajamouli does loud melodrama and theatricality, it doesn't look awkward because he happens to be telling a fantasy story — and he knows the exact measure. "Peddi", on the other hand, makes it evident quite early on that it's a social issue that uses the sports drama as a medium to tell a large story about the disenfranchised, who are not even afforded the respect given to animals. There is even a dialogue about this from Ram Charan — in fact, one of the better written lines in the movie — delivered in the third act of the movie.
But here's where things get very awkward. If you're going to tell a story about a serious issue, why take the storytelling route usually opted for fantasy epics? Sure, you could make the argument that this is a fictional story. But you're not telling a story about an all-powerful god or a formidable mythological hero. Even if you're going to make an argument that this is an extraordinary story of an ordinary 'hero', "Peddi" feels like a movie suffering from an identity crisis. Strangely enough, seeking an identity happens to be one of the protagonist's goals.
"Peddi" feels like a weird mishmash of several films we have seen before. It feels so derivative. Aside from a certain 'twist' in the third act that interestingly subverts the conventional Telugu 'mass hero' archetype, there are bits of "Pushpa", "Sarpatta Parambarai" and, to some extent, Charan's own "Rangasthalam".
Frustratingly enough, the film's most engaging portions come after the first 90 mins — that is, post-interval — when Peddi, the character, gets into a very distressing situation that leads him to a difficult choice which in turn leads him right to the doorstep of a wrestling guru, played by Shiva Rajkumar. These portions carry, let's say, a bit of inventiveness, like when the cricketer Peddi and the wrestler Peddi are simultaneously presented in the arena during a critical moment. The training montage and the Ram Charan-Shiva Rajkumar interactions not only evoke the Arya-Pasupathi scenes from "Sarpatta Parambarai", but also the 1978 martial arts classic "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" where Gordon Liu is made to do some heavy manual labour at the Shaolin temple before he can get a taste of what he went there to do in the first place. Interestingly, Peddi is also made to undergo a lesson-in-disguise ritual before his guru thinks he is ready. And Charan looks very convincing in these portions, as the resolute hero who is doing all this, as we later learn, not for his personal glory but for his people.
But the way the movie sells this intention comes off looking very insincere and award-baiting. It's as though this was a part written with the hope of winning another acting National award for Telugu cinema, just like Allu Arjun did for "Pushpa". And I wouldn't be surprised if it won. But, if you were to ask me, I would say Arjun winning that award makes more sense. (Also, who said we cannot give a national award to commercial cinema? Playing a mass hero character is also incredibly difficult.)
I also use the word 'insincere' for another reason. How are we supposed to take seriously a social issue that introduces a ridiculously underdeveloped and regressive love track where the camera zooms in on Janhvi Kapoor's navel multiple times — basically, the camera is seeing what Peddi is seeing — and then, midway through the film, tries to convince us that Peddi's love for this woman was born out of an admiration for her personality? This woman, who behaves like an influencer who shows her midriff in every reel? This woman, who gives an awkward line about CONSENT after she realises that the man who forcefully kissed her in the dark was Peddi? For lack of a better word, she is a useless character. (By the way, if you showed me four stills of Jhanvi from her last four films and asked me to name them, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.) Well, at least we should also give credit to the movie for pandering to the female gaze, too, by focusing on Ram Charan's chiselled body for a significant amount of time.
There's more, but this movie is not worth wasting too much energy and time on. So, I'm simply going to end this review by saying something positive: "Peddi" is not "Raja Saab". Whether it's helpful or not is up to the reader.
Film: Peddi
Director: Buchi Babu Sana
Cast: Ram Charan, Shiva Rajkumar, Jagapathi Babu, Divyenndu, Janhvi Kapoor, Boman Irani
Rating: 2/5
